Seven in the Morning
by RabulaTasa
Summary: AU It's seven in the morning, do you know where your neighbor is?
1. Zero Dark Hundred

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Teen Titans.

**Author's Note**: A two-shot, and an exception to one of my personal rules of writing. We'll see how far blasphemy takes this.

Also, this _might_ be a bribe. You know who you are.

_Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.__  
_-Benjamin Franklin

* * *

_**Zero Dark Hundred**_

_04:49_

_04:50_

_04:51_

_BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE-click_

A grey hand retreated from the now silent alarm clock and into the warm cocoon of sheets from which it had reluctantly emerged.

_04:58_

_04:59_

_05:00_

_BEEP BEEP BEE-click_

Groggily, Rachel Raven Roth sat up in her bed and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Another two minutes of sedate stretching and convincing herself not to give in to the enticements of Morpheus' realm elapsed before she swung her legs over the side of her king-sized bed and dropped to the floor. Pausing to pick up her alarm clock off of the floor, she made her way to the bathroom to begin getting ready for the day.

_

* * *

04:58_

_04:59_

_05:00_

_BEEP BEEP BEEP (whump) BEEP BEEP BEEP click_

Garfield Mark Logan sat on the floor of his bedroom as he shook loose the effects of his traditional morning faceplant. He sometimes questioned the wisdom of keeping his old bunkbed from college, much less sleeping in the top bunk. Deciding—again, as he did every morning—that the matter could wait another day to be dealt with, he dragged his exhausted self to the door and made his way to the bathroom next door.

On his way, he threw his traditional morning glare at Victor's room, knowing full well that his cyborg roommate would be out in the kitchen making breakfast before he could get out of the shower.

* * *

Rachel was pulling her hair into a ponytail as she stepped into the kitchen wearing a knee-length grey skirt and a short-sleeved purple blouse. Absently, she waved a hand in the general direction of the stovetop, and the kitchen implements started floating around, preparing her breakfast. A glance at her reflection in the window reminded her that her hair was still damp from the shower, and a small gesture cast a spell that significantly accelerated the drying process. Satisfied, she walked to her apartment's front door and retrieved the newspaper that she had delivered every morning.

By the time she had finished looking over the front page (_METAHUMAN ROBS JUMP CITY BANK, STEALS CANDY FROM INNOCENT BABY WHILE ESCAPING_), her waffles were ready and her kitchen was in the same pristine condition she had found it in.

"If I live another fourteen billion years, I am certain that I will _still_ never understand you, daughter."

Rachel sighed and set her paper down, as she had done every morning ever since her sixteenth birthday. Sitting across the table from her sat the man who claimed to be her father, Trigon the Terrible.

"It is because I am a woman, Father. If _half_ of what Mom would say when I asked how you two met was true…"

Before she had accidentally blown herself up when Rachel was sixteen, Arella Roth had been one of the most powerful sorceresses on the planet. Her success in the arcane, however, did not translate into her romantic life, and after a particularly disastrous date she had gotten more than a little drunk and decided to _summon_ some company for the night rather than settle for the as of late disappointing selection of human males in the area. A slip of the tongue had caused her to speak the wrong name at the precisely wrong moment, and instead of binding an attractive (and _sterile_) incubus to her will, she had wound up dragging a startled and bewildered Trigon to bed. Nine months later, Rachel was born and immediately entered into the Metahuman registry, on account of having four red glowing eyes, as well as the capacity to telepathically demand that the doctor put her back in immediately.

Trigon, of course, denounced the whole story as "a pack of lies" and claimed that the roles had been completely reversed, although after some prodding he _did_ concede that it was Arella who had given birth to Rachel.

"All I'm saying," Trigon grumbled, "is that you're the daughter of one of the most powerful demons in Hell (and I say that in all modesty), and _still_ every morning you voluntarily wake up far earlier than you prefer and go spend your day dealing with screaming children. Why can't you just take over the world already?"

"Why would I want to rule the world?" she retorted. "I would have to deal with grown-up children bothering me all day for this, that, or the other."

"But at least you could entertain yourself by torturing the more annoying ones to death." He looked positively delighted at the idea. Rachel had once asked what sort of tortures he had in mind, and the reply subsequently put her off meat for the rest of her life.

"If it is _any_ consolation," she cooly replied, "I get to jab the little terrors with needles."

"Needles that are _good_ for them_,_" he countered. "God, your mother corrupted the Hell out of you."

Before Rachel could begin to point out how incredibly _wrong_ that statement was, their argument was interrupted by the smell of burning bacon.

* * *

"Well, I hope you're happy."

Garfield had to admit that his elation at managing to get his friend to eat a breakfast that _didn't_ feature slaughtered animals was somewhat dampened by the odor of the ruined meat. Their usual "discussion" had distracted them both to the point of forgetfulness, and soon enough the thin strips of pig flesh were unfit for human consumption.

"Nothing wrong with pancakes, Vic. You headed off to work at the IRS today?" Victor choked on his orange juice as Garfield said this; the changeling's attempts at guessing where his half of the rent check came from had been going on for as long as the two of them had been living together. This morning's guess was closer than last week's proposition that he was secretly a Victoria's Secret model ("Hello? Built-in hologram projector?"), but not by much.

"Speaking of work," said Victor, "when does your first class start again?" Garfield was the local high school's twelfth-grade English teacher, and his earliest class did not start until ten.

A fain reddish tint appeared on Garfield's cheeks, and he suddenly found an excuse to be looking anywhere _except_ Victor. "I… I like to get there early, you know? Get the seat warm, grade some quizzes…" he trailed off, and Victor took the opportunity to have a little fun at his friend's expense in retaliation for his meatless meal.

"Warm up your chair? Gar, if you sit in that chair behind your desk for more than ten minutes at a time, then I'm not a card-carrying member of the People for the Eating of Tasty Animals. You want to know what _I_ think?"

A somewhat brighter flush rose on Garfield's face, and he quickly stood up from the table and carried his dirty plate to the sink to rinse it off. "I'd love to chat, Vic, but I've got to get to work." The changeling all but fled the kitchen, much to Victor's private amusement.

Dashing to the door, Garfield did a double-check to make certain his appearance was satisfactory, and to his dismay he noticed a twinge of green hue making itself present in his otherwise fair complexion. Darting back to the bathroom, he hurriedly dug through the medicine cabinet until he located the small unmarked box that held his medicine. One of the perks Victor's mystery employer provided him was these apparent miracle pills that, through some process that his friend had failed miserably in trying to explain in layman's terms, changed the skin color to some predetermined tone. They were horribly expensive, but Vic's health insurance apparently paid for them for some reason, and that was that.

Nothing could change the shape of his ears, though, so he had to find excuses to wear hats that covered them. It was winter now, so a woolen toboggan was perfectly acceptable, and if anyone questioned why he would wear one indoors, he could just claim to get cold easily. Plucking a black and purple one off of the floor, he made his way to the door. "See ya tonight, metalhead!"

"Say hello to Rachel for me!" Vic laughed silently as he heard his friend stumble and curse.

* * *

Rachel looked up at her clock and realized that it was almost seven O'clock, and that if she spent much more time talking with her father she would be late. Rushing around, she hunted for her purse and shoes.

"That's another thing I can't understand about you, Raven," Trigon said. For some reason, he preferred to address her by her middle name instead of her first. "You could spend another hour or two in bed and still make it to your job in plenty of time to profane your heritage, but you absolutely _insist_ on leaving at this unholy hour." When Rachel didn't dignify his comment with a response, he pressed on. "If you like the mortal so much, then _take_ him! You've been wasting perfectly good mornings for three years now when you could just enthrall him and sleep in."

That last comment earned him a growl, and he decided that further discussion would likely fail to bear fruit. When Rachel looked up, her father's seat was vacant.

Muttering under her breath, she said several uncomplimentary things about the creature that had sired her, and then turned herself to the business of leaving her apartment. She quickly checked over the wards and shields that allowed her father to visit without announcing his arrival to every magic-sensitive person in the city (This was for her convenience, not his, as he would appear every morning whether or not his presence would set off a general magicians' panic, and then leave her to deal with the consequences.), and then set about adjusting her appearance to hide the fact that she was a Meta from the population in general. Her patients might not care if she had some oddly colored hair, but their parents certainly would… and for that matter, so might Garfield. She didn't know how the teacher would react to her somewhat questionable ancestry and occasionally terrifying abilities, but given the general attitude towards her kind (Metas and demons both), it was better to play it safe.

Grey and purple became pale and black, a lab coat was tossed over her blouse (and because it was winter, another coat went over that), and the pediatrician stepped out her front door just in time to meet Garfield as he left his apartment across the hall, as she did every morning.

If waiting until her empathetic senses told her that he was out in the hallway was cheating… well, she _was_ a half-demon, after all. Cheating was allowed, if not to be expected.

* * *

"So I told them that they had two choices: write a paper based on a full story arc of any major comic book publication, or write a paper on _Jane Eyre_. I'll give you two guesses as to how that vote came out." Garfield and Rachel were regaling each other with stories from the previous day of work as they walked to their respective places of employment.

The walk to work was how the two had met each other. A sudden crisis at the practice had required that Rachel come into work earlier than usual for a week, and suddenly the pediatrician found herself sharing the commute with her not unattractive neighbor. At first she had thought that he was following her, and had been preparing herself to take action should he make a move, but his path chose that moment to divert him to the high school she passed on the way to work every day. The next day, he started up a conversation, ostensibly to relieve the boredom of the commute (although, were he to be completely honest with himself, he was more concerned about what might happen if she were to turn around at an inopportune moment and catch him admiring her rather attractive… profile… and decided that he would be safer if the temptation to ogle was replaced with conversation), and by the end of the week, Rachel couldn't bring herself to tell him that she didn't actually have to go to work at that hour of the morning. The next semester, Garfield found himself in a similar position, his classes being scheduled later in the day, and so the doctor and the teacher found themselves waking up unnecessarily early every weekday in order to maintain a fiction.

"I am _sure_ that the parents of your students are going to be wildly enthused with your proposed choice of reading material," Rachel stated dryly. "I can see it now: a line of parents around the block into the principal's office to congratulate you on it."

That made Garfield laugh. "Well, if it comes to that, I can always think of some way to assign the _parents_ to read _Jane Eyre_. I'm certain they'll be much happier with that!"

"I will have you know," Rachel growled in mock irritation, "that I happen to have liked _Jane Eyre_ very much, thank you."

"Rachel, Rachel, Rachel," Garfield said in a singsong tone, throwing his arm around her shoulder. "Can you tell me the title of a single book you've read that you _didn't_ like?"

Rachel flushed at the physical contact, though the spells altering her appearance hid the reaction from sight. Recovering from her distraction, she contemplated the question for a moment before answering.

"I did not care much for _The Joy of Cooking_." Her unexpected response froze the teacher in his tracks, and he openly gaped at his companion.

"You… you just…" he paused to collect himself. "Did you just make a joke?" He seemed positively flabbergasted, and Rachel couldn't help but to twist the knife a little.

"Of course not, Mr. Logan. You and I both know that I do not have a sense of humor." It took all of her self-discipline to deliver that line with a straight face, and not joining in with Garfield's laughter in reaction to her ridiculous statement was almost too much to ask. Almost.

The pair were distracted, though, and did not notice the several unsavory figures that had appeared from the alley they had stopped in front of until the gang of thugs had them surrounded.

The speech coming from the apparent ringleader was more or less the same as would be found in any movie or poorly written story, and so Rachel ignored it to focus on how she could get the two of them out of this mess. If she were alone, there would be no problem: she would start throwing people around until the punks got the message and left her alone. With Garfield present, however, that was a much less attractive option.

Garfield found himself in a similar situation. A gorilla or a dinosaur would take care of the ruffians quite handily, but…

Moving in front of Rachel—a tactically useless gesture, given that they were surrounded—Garfield raised his fists in what he _hoped_ was a threatening manner. The ringleader cut his speech short and laughed, prompting his goons to laugh along with him.

Then they suddenly stopped laughing, instead opting to run away screaming in terror.

The sudden change in attitude confused Garfield, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Yeah!" he shouted, "You'd better run!" He posed aggressively for a few seconds before turning around to see a very blank-looking Rachel. "Okay, I'll bite: what scared them off?"

For years to come, Rachel would view the fact that she delivered her response without an ounce of self-satisfaction evident in her voice or expression to be worthy of an Oscar nomination.

"Beats me."

* * *

"I take it by the stench of fear that hangs about you like the stench of your urine that you and your underlings failed to live up to the terms of our… agreement." A somewhat chastened gang leader trembled at the unspoken threat carried in his unseen employer's voice "All you have accomplished is to make the more wary than before."

"P-p-please, give us one more shot!" begged the terrified thug. "T-t-they don't know t-t-that it's _them_ s-s-specifically that you're after!"

The voice, which had previously been coming from somewhere in front of the hapless gang leader, was suddenly speaking directly into his ear, an iron grip on his neck keeping the panicked man from fleeing. "Tell me, _why_ should I allow you a second chance to fail me?"

The terrified man told him, and a chilling laugh echoed in the darkness in response. Then the voice—and the hand—disappeared, leaving only a trembling criminal behind as evidence that they had ever been there at all.


	2. An Ungodly Hour

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Teen Titans.

**Author's Note**: This is _supposed_ to be a two-shot. I'm trying to keep that in mind as I write, but I'm uncertain as to the success of my efforts. Also, I'm supposed to be writing a 20 page workup on the development prospects of Vietnam, due Tuesday at midnight, not to mention a paper on Napoleon and the French Revolution… so of course, I'm writing fanfiction. Duh.

_Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.  
_-James Thurber

* * *

**_An Ungodly Hour_**

_04:58_

_04:59_

_05:00_

_BEEP BEEP BEEP _*bleep* _BEEP click_

*bleep*

* * *

Garfield sat on the floor of his bedroom and stared blankly at his now silent alarm clock. His mind had spent all of yesterday going over the events of that morning's walk to work, and the whole thing still had him baffled. Rachel had seemed as much in the dark as he was… but then again, he had about as much luck reading her body language as some of his less academically apt students had with _Beowulf_… if he had made them read it in Old English.

So Rachel probably knew more than she was letting on… which worried him a bit. Not that he had any problem with her keeping secrets—he'd be the worst sort of hypocrite if he held something like _that_ against her—but the sort of secret that could send a pack of street thugs screaming for their mothers was a little… worrisome. A peculiar thought began to gather momentum in his mind-

_Knock knock!_ "Hey short, green, and weird! If you don't haul your ass outta there PDQ, you'll be flirting on an empty stomach!"

The fledgling thought died a swift and merciless death as the dreaded notion of going hungry until lunch sent the changeling charging headlong into the day.

* * *

"So I hear you had an exciting day yesterday." Rachel looked up from the front page of the _Jump City Journalist_ to see Trigon seated across the table from her, immaculately dressed (as always) and delicately munching on a dark red morsel that seemed to writhe in agony without even moving. She frowned at her father for a moment, then returned to her reading.

"I would hardly call terrifying a gang of mentally defective schoolyard bullies 'exciting,' but if that's what gets you going… well, I _shudder_ to think of what the state of affairs back home is like."

"I'll thank you to leave Jersey out of this, daughter." He paused for a moment to collect himself before pushing on with his original line of conversation. "I am curious, however, how you managed to keep your abilities hidden from… the _boy_… after that little display of power, in light of your irrational refusal to use magic on him."

Rachel buried her face a little deeper into her paper. "I've never said that I refused to use magic on Garfield, father, just that I wouldn't enthrall him."

Trigon blinked in confusion. "I'm… not entirely certain I understand, then. Why in Hell would you be willing to use sorcery on the creature but not… excuse me, I digress. I take it you Befuddled him, then?" The Demon Lord arched an eyebrow as his daughter's grip on her paper tightened considerably. A moment passed in silence before he broke out in a grin, popping the rest of his breakfast into his mouth.

"As we both know, in order to properly Befuddle someone you have to create a… shall we say, a _focal point_… to draw the subject's focus away from what you're distracting from." Another moment passed as he basked in his daughter's obvious discomfort. "What, dare I ask, was the _young_ _man_ thinking about instead?"

* * *

As Garfield made his way to the kitchen, he smelled the telltale odor of frying pigflesh and did his best to suppress his gag reflex. The olfactory assault was nothing new to the changeling, of course, but the evil laughter…

Walking into the kitchen, he immediately noticed that his roommate was sporting a pointed goatee that he was _certain_ hadn't been there the previous morning. "If you're the evil twin, shouldn't you be cooking a _vegan_ breakfast or something?"

Victor spun around and let loose another round of cackling. "Tremble and bow down before me, ye mortals, for truth, the hand that rocks the griddle is the hand that rules the world!" He took a breath to let go with some more villainous laughter, but Garfield cut him off before he could get a good head of steam built up.

"Hold on a second, I thought it was 'the hand that rocks the _cradle_ rules the world.' Nobody said anything about a griddle."

"Dude," Victor dropped the villain shtick to try and get the joke through his friend's occasionally thick skull, "I'm adapting it to cooking, you know: making a _pun_? A play on words? I'm pretty sure they covered this in one of your English classes back in college."

"Oh yeah, I get it now. Alright, but I still don't see how you're quote unquote 'rocking' the griddle. I mean, it looks pretty stable from over here, and with all that hot grease you would think that rocking would be a _bad_ thing." While he was talking, Garfield grabbed a bowl, some cereal, and some milk from the fridge, combined the three, and began shoveling the resulting mixture into his mouth at breakneck speeds.

"Man, slow down before you choke and I have to find a new sucker to pay half of my utilities bill. Anyway, I don't mean 'rock' as in 'rock back and forth,' but as in 'rock the house' or 'rocking out.'" Garfield's breakfast inhalation halted for a moment as the changeling's eyes drifted over to the griddle in question.

"Oh, I get it now!" The cereal consumption resumed at even greater speeds.

"'Bout time you got it, grass stain," Victor muttered as he turned back to his bacon, only to find several chunks of black carbon sitting where his juicy meat had been only moments before. A clatter behind him drew his attention to the kitchen sink behind him, and he spun around to see an empty kitchen and the empty bowl his devious friend had left behind in his flight to safety.

"I'm going to hunt you down, salad head! _Mark my words!_" An evil cackle was his only reply.

* * *

Garfield found it mildly odd that his eyes kept drifting back to Rachel's posterior every few seconds as they walked to work. Not that he was _complaining_, mind you, but he was fairly certain that if she turned around, she would end him. He tried speeding up in order to be walking _beside_ the pediatrician, but for some reason the thought left his head almost as soon as he tried to act on it.

* * *

Rachel tried Very Hard not to make a mental note of Garfield's apparent susceptibility to forms of magic that targeted the mind.

She failed, and mentally muttered a curse at her father.

* * *

Jeremy and Justine had been selected for this job because the brother and sister duo were the least tattooed and least pierced members of the gang, and were therefore much able to blend in with the more "respectable" segment of society. This was a vital qualification, as the crew's experience with the targets yesterday ruled out brute force as the means to achieve their goal, forcing the hired thugs to rely on guile instead.

The pair watched the man and woman coming their way from their respective posts and tried to look as much like two normal salary rats headed to work as possible.

* * *

It was the smell that first alerted Garfield that something was wrong, but he barely managed to get out a "Hey Rae" before the cloth covered his mouth and nose and the blackness took him.

* * *

Rachel heard Garfield say something that was suddenly cut off, and she whirled around to see that the street behind them was empty except for a man with a cloth—her train of thought derailed as a more feminine hand placed a cloth over her own face, and she blacked out.

* * *

Victor hunched over his weekly status report, wrestling with the same dilemma that he struggled with every week. Finally, he turned to the ultimate authority: his boss's secretary.

"Hey Richard! Does-" The serious-looking man seated at the desk interrupted the question before the researcher could finish it.

"No, Doctor Stone, you can _not_ include vegetarianism as a side-effect of the medication we're providing the subject, especially because Mister Logan had been a practicing vegetarian for many years before we ever started treating him." Victor sagged in defeat, but Richard knew that next Friday, the same question would pop up again. Dr. Stone was nothing if not persistent. "Now, Doctor Anders had me compile a list of new prospective-"

Richard was delivered a taste of his own medicine as the lead researcher burst into the room and interrupted the stoic secretary. "Oh, it is a _wonderful_ morning today, is it not? And friend Victor! You have arrived on time and unharmed! Glorious!" Victor braced himself as Doctor Anders flew over to him and accompanied her morning greeting with her traditional cheerful attempt to murder him by squeezing all of his organs out his head and feet. She released him and he let out a sigh of relief; she was by far the most brilliant scientific mind he had ever encountered, but she tended to forget the fact that humans were a little squishier than her own people. Speaking of which…

"Good morning Richard! You too have survived your daily trek to our workplace!" She moved in to hug the obviously torn secretary, and Victor winced slightly while saying a silent prayer of thanks for his sturdy construction.

"Doc- hurk!" Victor silently mused if Richard ever regretted introducing the alien to Earthly ways of expressing affection. Judging by the expression on the normally unflappable man's face, it wasn't terribly likely… at least, not until he broke a rib.

Finally, Kori released her "unfortunate" victim and held him at arms' length. "I do believe I have instructed you to call me 'Kori,' have I not?" Still holding her secretary, she turned to the only other occupant of the room. "Victor? Have you not heard me issue this instruction?"

Victor nodded. "At least once a day, Kor. For several years, I might add." So far, the day was unfolding as expected. Coming up next, Richard would protest-

"But Doctor Anders," Richard protested dutifully, "proper workplace protocol demands that-"

"That you obey the instructions of your employer?" Victor blinked. This was new. "Then as your employer, I hereby command you to address me as I have frequently requested you to do." She delivered her order with a extraordinarily regal air, and not for the first time Victor found himself wondering about what her life back on her home planet had been like.

"But," Richard floundered about, clearly not having anticipated this particular tactic. The normal routine was for her to throw her hands up (another Earthly emotional expression she had become fond of) and move on to the business of the day. Her pressing the issue left him off balance, and she apparently had no intention of letting him get his feet back under him.

"I have delivered my instructions," she said, narrowing her eyes and tightening her grip on Richard's shoulders very slightly. "I trust you will comply." Richard's eyes darted around in a state of panic, as though he was seriously considering fleeing the room, before finally doing a passable imitation of Victor's earlier defeated slump.

"Very well… Kori." The head researcher squealed happily and pulled the bewildered secretary in for another hug.

After that business was taken care of, Richard presented the list of potential prospects for the program. Kori ran an underground free service for Metahumans (her numerous patents more than adequately covered the expenses) that custom-tailored "disguises" to each client to help them blend into normal society. These disguises usually required either a medical or a technological approach, and between her and Victor there were very few cases where the client could not at least mingle with the general populace with some degree of anonymity. Richard had been brought on very quickly once the potential for misuse became apparent: the man had resources _everywhere_, and kept the team from supplying Metacriminals with a disguise they could abuse for their own ends. Most of the applicants were more or less harmless, but some fell into the "distinctly questionable" category. Most of today's prospective clients fell into the former category, but one definitely did _not_.

"I don't like it," Richard said. "Sure, she's served her sentence, but that doesn't mean that she's not going to reoffend, and if she's picked up with something we've made on her…" he drifted off, the implication obvious. Public exposure would be _disastrous_. Norms liked to keep Metas out in plain sight.

"On the other hand," countered Victor, "not only was she granted early parole for good behavior, she served her parole without a single mark against her, not only finding gainful employment as a felon, but also as a Meta. If she's genuinely reformed, she has just as much right to a normal existence as any of these other applicants."

"None of those other applicants were _criminals_."

"She's already _paid_ her debt to society," Victor countered, with a touch more heat that the situation warranted. "She's already been punished, it's not up to us to continue to pile more crap onto her just because we can!"

"Ahem." Kori tried to politely interrupt the argument, but neither participant noticed.

"Are you willing to put _all_ of the people we're helping at risk for this? One arrest and we're neck-high in-"

"_Ahem._" Kori tried again, a bit more firmly this time, but with no success. Her expression flattened in annoyance as the debate raged on.

"So now we're judging her worth? 'I'm sorry ma'am, but you're not worth the trouble!' We don't serve criminals because we don't want to help them commit crimes, but that's not the issue here, is it?!"

"_AHEM!"_

Immediately, the two men froze, suddenly remembering that there was a third party present who, for all intents and purposes, had the only opinion that really mattered. Kori generally went along with what Victor and Richard agreed on, but she still had the final say.

"You are both correct," she said evenly. "She _is_ a risk, but she is also entitled to the same chances as any other person." She paused a moment to look at both her employees before she announced her decision.

"We shall meet with this… Jinx… and interview her. I will make my decision regarding her participation then. Richard, you will perform the proper research and schedule the meeting. Victor, you will look at the samples we have and see if we even _can_ help her. Does that sound fair to you both?" Her expression encouraged the others to agree that, yes, it was _very_ fair.

A sudden beeping from Richard's waist momentarily distracted the trio, and the secretary drew out a small yellow PDA. Within moments, the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. "My sources are telling me that," he paused for a second and glanced up at Victor before looking back at the circular device in his hands. "They're telling me that Garfield Logan has been kidnapped."

To the surprise of the others, Victor visibly relaxed, leaning back with a relieved laugh. "That's it? Oh man, I feel sorry for whoever snatched _him_. Trust me, you do _not_ want to mess with _that_ can of worms! If he's not back by dinner, I'll eat my boot." It was a fairly safe bet to make, given that Garfield was not only all but impossible to imprison, but also that Victor did not wear boots.

"Also taken," Richard continued, "was one Rachel Raven Roth." Victor groaned and dropped his forehead into his hands.

"Of course, now he's going to try to pretend he's normal until they _force_ him to change. Wonderful." Richard blinked.

"Wait, what do you mean by that?"

"She's our neighbor," Victor explained, "and a while back Garfield and Rachel ran into one another and hit it off pretty well. Gar's got it bad for her, but he's not terribly certain how she'll take the whole 'I'm greener than your recycling bin' thing. I'm pretty sure she's interested too, but he sees a lot more of her than I do. Why?"

"Because Rachel Raven Roth is the spawn of Satan."

There was a moment of silence as Victor and Kori stared at Richard blankly. Kori was unaware of the implication of what Richard had just said (although she quickly determined that it was _not_ complimentary), and Victor…

"Dude, what the hell? She's a _pediatrician_ for cryin' out loud!"

The well-connected secretary backpedaled slightly. "And perhaps she's a good person-"

"You're damned right she is! So what the hell is with this 'spawn of Satan' bull?!"

"Because," Richard said slowly, "her father is Satan. Or Lucifer. Or Beelzebub, or Trigon, or any of a million names he might go by. The apple might have been launched from the tree in a howitzer, but if given the proper motivation…"

"You're serious, right? No joke? My neighbor is Satan's kid?" Richard nodded. "So… who wants to throw a rescue party?"

Kori raised her hand, smiling widely. "Ooh, ooh! I do!" A flicker of concern flashed across her face, and she turned to Richard. "But first, please explain who this 'Satan' is, and why it is such a terrible thing to be his child."

* * *

When Rachel came to, she found herself strapped tightly to a chair by her wrists and ankles. Laughing to herself, she focused her mind and reached for her powers… and winced as her restraints glowed brightly, the previously invisible runes etched into them blazing into sight.

Blinking the spots from her eyes, she realized that she couldn't feel Garfield anywhere nearby. She couldn't tell if the empathetic silence was the result of her restraints or simple distance, so she turned around in her chair as much as possible and looked around. Garfield was nowhere to be found.

Gritting her teeth in determination, she tried once more to draw upon her powers, causing the runes to flare up once again.

* * *

Garfield woke up slowly, rolling over out of the cot he was lying in and landing face first on the concrete floor. "Ow."

Suddenly, the situation came crashing down on him as he remembered his last conscious moments on the street. Frantically, he looked around in a desperate search for his companion. His enclosure was a simple one, being nothing very different from a police holding cell. In one corner was the cot that he had been passed out on, and in the middle of the floor was…

Garfield scooted himself closer to the tape player sitting in front of him and cautiously hit the "Play" button. The voice that spoke was deep and foreboding and completely without a hint of emotion in it.

"You have one hour to find her, Mister Logan."

* * *

**Author's Note**: See, this is what I get for saying "two-shot." Figures.


	3. Their Finest Hour

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Teen Titans.

**Author's Note**: I'm a bit less drunk than I was when I wrote _A State of Confusion_ earlier today, according to the $40 breathalyzer I got my sister for Christmas (I'm blowing a .07 at the moment, and I _was_ blowing… well, considerably higher.). Let's ride this pony into the sunset, and pray it's not cardboard.

_All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer._

- Homer Simpson

* * *

_**Their Finest Hour**_

Garfield took a quick look at the area around the bars of his holding cell. He couldn't see very far, as his view was obstructed by wooden crates of assorted size, color, and markings, leading him to believe that he was probably in some sort of warehouse. He couldn't hear any guards, but he figured that didn't necessarily mean nobody was watching: there could be security cameras and motion sensors and all sorts of things that would immediately send hordes of heavily armed henchmen (*ahem* hench_persons_) in to shoot him or beat him or do otherwise unpleasant things to his person.

It was with a start that he realized that he was _expected_ to escape, and that he had spent two precious minutes standing around idly out of the hour he had been allotted to save Rachel. He didn't know how his abductors thought he would get out—there was no way they could have known beforehand about his powers—but he didn't want to waste any more time trying to figure out how he _should_ escape, and instead simply shifted into a chartreuse mongoose and slipped through the bars.

The instant his tail cleared the cell, an intolerably loud klaxon started blaring, surprising him out of his form and into his usual human shape.

Garfield had never made much use of his Metahuman capabilities, given the social stigma attached to them, and as a result had not had reason to use them since he had started on that medication regimen that Vic's employers so generously paid for. The pills that had turned his skin and hair to their socially acceptable hues did not, it seemed, carry over through a transformation. Garfield was green again, by virtue of needing to shift out of his cell, and he was _not_ terrifically thrilled about it.

'Maybe,' he thought, 'Rachel will be held in a dark room that won't let her see me very clearly, and I can find some excuse to scram before she catches an eyeful of… well… _me_.' He heard heavy footsteps running in his general direction over the noise of the klaxons, and shifted into a form more suited to moving about unnoticed.

Meanwhile, in the brightly-lit room where Rachel was being held captive…

The sudden sounds of alarms going off in the distance might have distracted a less disciplined mind than hers, but her powers required control, and control required discipline, and Rachel possessed power, control, and discipline in spades. This fact was becoming more and more apparent as she struggled against her bonds, and as the bonds fought back.

The glowing runes, which had at first only appeared as she reached for her innate abilities, were now permanently etched into the restraints, the only variation in their appearance being in the intensity of the light they emanated.

They were also getting rather hot.

The smell of burning hair and the pain of burning flesh might have distracted a less disciplined mind than hers…

* * *

"Take this next left."

Richard tried not to grind his teeth together. "I _know_ how to get there, Vic." It seemed as though having a built-in navigational system gave the researcher an inclination towards backseat driving, which the secretary could have honestly done without.

"Are you sure you do?" Vic shouted over the wind. "I mean, you missed that turn back there on Eleventh-"

"I did _not_ miss it," Richard replied hotly. "I'm taking my own route, _thank you very much!_"

Victor went silent, and for a moment it seemed as though he was going to let Richard drive the motorcycle in peace.

"Are you taking the tunnel?"

"_YesIamtakingthetunnel!_" Richard shouted angrily. He suspected his dentist was going to have words with him the next time he saw her, the way his teeth were grinding now.

"You know, the bridge would be faster this time of-"

Richard revved the engine and sped up to drown out his passenger's voice. After a minute, he felt his cell phone vibrate on his belt and turned on his headset inside his helmet.

"Also, there's a wreck on Twenty-Eighth coming up soon."

"Would you rather be riding with Dr. Anders?"

Pause.

"Since she would be carrying us, don't you mean 'riding Dr. Anders'?"

Richard hung up. A minute later, his phone rang again. He let it go for a few rings before angrily turning on his headset again. "What do you want?!"

"Well that's a fine way to say 'Thank you,' isn't it _Dick_?" The feminine voice in his ear sounded more amused than annoyed, if anything.

Richard sighed, and dialed back the irritation a bit. "Sorry Babs, I've just had Vic harassing me-"

"Oh, the cute one?"

He felt like hitting his head on the windscreen, but decided at the last second that doing that while weaving through traffic was probably unwise. Heaving a sigh, Richard opted to ignore that last comment of Oracle's. "What've you got for me, Barbara?"

She ignored the use of her full name, and continued in a more serious tone. "I spoke with Doctor Fate about the Roth woman—by the way, that man is an _ass_. I mean I'm just minding my own business-"

"By poking into everyone else's."

"-and out of nowhere this giant glowing _ankh_ pops up in the living room. No calling ahead to make sure I don't have a stroke when he shows up on my coffee table, just _bam!_"

"You're getting a bit far afield, Babs."

"Right. In any case, Fate told me to tell you that apparently Ms. Roth is… a bit of a wild card. She was supposed to fulfill this ten-thousand year-old prophecy on her sixteenth birthday and incinerate all life on Earth, or something like that. I think we were going on our first date that night, actually. In any case, we are all spectacularly unincinerated, as you can probably tell. According to Fate, not fulfilling a prophecy of that magnitude was a bit of a mystic faux paus, and while he _claims_ to be happy that she decided to screw that one up (you can never really tell, with Fate), the overriding message that I got was: she will break any rule to get what she wants."

"So… the Devil's kid isn't all that bad?"

He could almost hear the redhead shaking her head on the other side of the line. "I didn't say that. She probably would've preferred not to go up in flames when she was sixteen either, so her bit of world-saving could very well have been nothing more than self-preservation. And she _does_ stick needles into children for a living. Just be _very_ careful around her. She's probably the most powerful Meta you'll run into, and definitely the least predictable. Fate tried to give me a list of her powers, and it would probably have been easier to list the things she _can't_ do. I've got telekinesis, temporal manipulation, and almost everything in between. I can't overemphasize this, Richard: _BE CAREFUL_."

"I will, don't worry. Got anything else for me?"

"Yeah. You're coming up on a wreck pretty soon—you should've taken the bridge, birdbrain—so I'm arranging a ride for you with… that _other_ redhead."

_Click._

Richard blinked in confusion for a moment, but before he could figure out exactly what Barbara had meant he felt the motorcycle give a lurch. Suddenly, he an Dr. Stone were no longer driving down downtown Jump City's crowded thoroughfares, but were instead hovering twenty feet in the air. He looked down to his left to see Dr. Anders gripping his bike by the frame and giving him an odd look.

"I… spoke with this 'Barbara,' who told me that you were going to be in need of assistance soon." The odd expression intensified, and Richard waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Please tell me, for while I am somewhat ignorant of your Earthly mating rituals, her behavior seemed to suit the Tamaranian rituals: are she and I to meet on the field of battle? I would not wish to do her harm, but…" she trailed off, waiting for an explanation of Richard's ex-girlfriend's apparently somewhat antagonistic behavior.

Now that it was safe to do so, Richard leaned forward and hit his head on the motorcycle's windscreen.

* * *

Half an hour had passed, and Garfield couldn't even catch so much as a _whiff_ of Rachel, even after three laps around the warehouse. He was desperate for a lead, but he didn't have the foggiest clue as to find one. He shifted back to his human form and sat down to think on one of the many crates strewn about the building's interior.

"Hey! You! On the box!" Garfield jumped at the sudden shout, nearly falling off of his perch. Steadying himself, he turned his head to see one of the various thugs his kidnapper had employed pointing a submachine gun at him. "Keep your hands where I can see them and get down from up there!

Garfield complied, landing on the ground ten feet in front of the guard and putting his hands in front of him to show that they weren't holding anything. Suddenly, he recognized the man as one of the street thugs that had confronted him and Rachel on their way to work the previous day, and he knew how he was going to find Rachel.

"Hey, aren't you one of those guys that ran away screaming for mommy the other day?" He knew he was taking a serious risk, considering the gun being pointed at him, but Garfield was gambling on the fact that his would-be captor appeared to want him alive for the time being.

"Fuck you, man!" the enforcer shouted, waving his weapon threateningly. "You ain't so fuckin' tough without your scary bitch to save your ass, are you?" To make his point he fired a shot off to the side, splintering a crate as well as alerting everyone in the building to Garfield's whereabouts.

Garfield didn't know what he meant by "your scary bitch" except that the woman in question was Rachel, and that he didn't particularly appreciate that sort of language being used to describe her. "I'll tell you what," he said. "You are going to tell me where Rachel is being held _right now_, or I'll show you why I'm a whole lot scarier than she is, capisce?"

The thug laughed. "You, scary? You're just a scrawny little holy _fuck_ you're a bear." And indeed, Garfield _was_ a bear at that precise moment, and he was also charging straight at the gunman, who at that same precise moment completely forgot the weapon in his hands. Before he could remember it, however, he was knocked to the ground, disarmed, and pinned by a very angry, very _large_ grizzly. A gob of saliva dripped out of Garfield's open jaws and landed on the side of the goon's face, bringing him back to the present.

"So… heh… you want to know where the scary lady's bein' held, eh? Heh… wow, what big teeth you have…"

* * *

Absently, Rachel noticed that the runes in her restraints had almost burnt all the way through the bands they had been inscribed on. Ignoring the searing pain of the red hot Metal burning away at her wrists and ankles, she focused her thoughts and reached for her powers once again.

Suddenly, she felt her bindings give. The bright white light of the runes dulled to an angry red glow, and then faded altogether. Almost immediately, the Metal bands cooled to room temperature, as though they had been quenched in a barrel of water. She gave a quiet laugh of triumph and tried to remove her shackles… and was blocked once again.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me." Her efforts to break the enchantments on her restraints had had an unforeseen side effect: the runes were now branded on her flesh. Fortunately, the brands were less precise than the etchings on her restraints, and the smudging effect, while not enough to allow her to outright heal her wounds, was sufficient to let her enter a healing trance. Still, trances took time… shaking her head, she found her center, and began redirecting the energies trapped within her body towards the areas affected by the burns. It was slow going, but as she wore away at the brands, the process would speed up considerably. Rachel estimated that within five minutes she would be free, and within seven she would secure Garfield… or else within eight, there were going to be a _lot_ fewer street thugs living in Jump City.

* * *

Garfield circled up in the sky, reading the markings on the sides of the buildings. The guard hadn't been able to produce coherent directions to where Rachel was being held prisoner, but had been more than forthcoming with the building number that Garfield needed. The changeling suspected a trap of some sort, given how easily the guard had recalled the building number (Had he had to guess, Garfield would've labeled the sixth grade as the thug's likely senior year.), but it was all he had to go on, and with the clock ticking…

His eagle eyes spotted the building he needed, and he swooped down, transforming as he landed.

* * *

Rachel felt a thrill of triumph as she wiped away the last remnants of her magical bindings, leaving the trifling matter of her physical bonds to deal with. A thought later, she was free to move about the room at will. A quick examination of the walls revealed no surprises there, either mystic or mundane. Her empathetic senses told her that a guard was standing on the other side of the door, and she opted to put on a bit of a show for him, in order to make him more… receptive… to her demands.

The guard gave a startled squeak as the black gateway opened beneath his feet, but it was choked off by the dark tendril that wrapped around his body like a python, squeezing the air out of him. The pressure on his ribcage wasn't what left him speechless, however. Rather, it was the sight of Rachel looming head and shoulders above him, her white lab coat extending all the way to the ground and billowing with what the occasional glimpse through the opening in the front hinted at being hundreds of tendrils identical to the one slowly suffocating him. Her facial expression betrayed only a hint of annoyance, which oddly terrified her would-be guard far more than outright rage would have.

"I'm going to ask you once, and if you don't give me what I want, then I'm going to pop you like a balloon and find someone else to ask. Do we understand each other?" She gave the guard a quick squeeze to drive the point home, and he gave a furious nod. She relaxed her hold a little so he would be able to breathe—barely—and answer her.

"Where. Is. Garfield?"

The guard started panicking in earnest now. While their employer had made certain that the guards holding the teacher knew where Rachel was, the opposite was not true. In truth, the man had no more idea of Garfield's location than Rachel herself did. So he decided to stall for time, hoping that something would happen to pull his bacon out of the fire.

It was not the wisest course of action to have taken.

At his stammering, Rachel's countenance grew darker and darker, until his stammering was cut off by the grip around his body suddenly tightening. His mouth opened and closed like a fish as he desperately gasped for air.

"_I said_," Rachel shouted, her eyes turning red and splitting from two into four, "_WHERE IS HE?!_" With that last shout, the man in her grip passed out, although Rachel couldn't tell—and didn't much care—whether it was from fear or from oxygen deprivation. Carelessly, she tossed his limp body to the ground, and roared in frustration. Black shards of energy gathered themselves around her person, and then launched into the walls and ceiling around her.

There was an earsplitting roar, and then the building collapsed.

* * *

Garfield hit the ground running, his two enormous legs supporting his fifty tons of bone, muscle, and sinew and propelling them towards the target warehouse. His plan was to simply overwhelm any resistance through a sheer show of force: there are precious few men in this world willing to stand and fight in the face of a charging tyrannosaurus, no matter how well-paid they are, and Garfield was betting that none of them were in his kidnapper's employ.

Lowering his head like a battering ram, the lizard king crashed into the warehouse door, tearing it off of its hinges like tissue paper. Immediately drawing to a halt—so as not to accidentally trample someone who didn't need trampling, like Rachel—he took a deep breath and let loose with an earsplitting roar.

To his not inconsiderable surprise, the building collapsed all around him.

* * *

Kori set the bike—laden with Victor and Richard—down at the edge of the warehouse district, at her secretary's direction. The two doctors had stepped back and allowed Richard to take the lead, given that his information was all that they had to act on.

"Alright," their temporary leader said, "Babs wasn't able to get a more precise location for where they were taken other than this general area, so both of you be on the lookout for anything unusual and report it. Dr. Anders-"

"_Kori_."

"-Kori, you search over there, Dr. Stone, you search in that direction, and I'll sear-"

_Crash._

"Hey Richard, I'd like to report an exploding warehouse and a green T-Rex. Think we should look into it?"

"Bite me, Vic."

* * *

Between the two of them, it was fairly safe to say that Garfield was more surprised by the turn of events. While Rachel certainly did not expect the building to collapse and reveal an extinct fifty ton carnivore in a shade it likely never walked the earth while wearing, she _did_ expect for the building to collapse, and also managed to avoid being struck by any debris. Garfield, on the other hand, was caught completely off guard, and managed to catch a good portion of the roof with his head. Thus it was the half-demon that reacted first, which was unfortunate, since she could not possibly recognize the green, mean, meat-eating machine before her as her considerably smaller vegetarian neighbor, and thereby attacked the hapless tyrannosaur in self-defense.

The hundreds of tendrils that the unfortunate guard had spied beneath the billowing lab coat leapt forth to do battle with their gargantuan foe, and before Garfield had a change to recover from the blows to his head he was snatched into the air and bodily thrown clear of the debris. To her surprise, the dinosaur vanished from sight in midair, only to be replaced by a similarly-colored hawk of some indeterminable species. Quickly, she readied a shield and levitated away from the debris of the warehouse, so that if the shapeshifting creature returned to attack, she would be ready.

Garfield was no less than a little worried. He hadn't gotten a good look at whatever had tossed his tyrannosaur form a good hundred yards away, but anything that could do _that_… well, if it hadn't been in the same building as Rachel, he'd have given it a wide berth. He could only hope that it had somehow protected the pediatrician from falling debris as the building collapsed. The alternative didn't bear thinking about.

Shifting into a red-tailed hawk in midair to avoid crashing into the ground—because when you weigh fifty tons, falling any considerable distance flat out _sucks_—and wheeled around to take a peek at whatever that _thing_ was that had chucked him like last week's garbage. Unfortunately, all he could see was a semi-opaque obsidian square that even _his_ formidable eyes could hardly penetrate, besides being able to tell that there was something vaguely human-shaped behind it. Clawing his way higher into the air, he got almost directly above his opponent, folded his wings, and dropped like a rock.

* * *

Victor pushed his legs as hard as he could, running much faster than his considerable weight and bulk would appear to allow. Behind him, Richard and Kori veered off to the sides in order to surround the two combatants. Richard had relayed the information he had received from his ex-girlfriend—Victor _still_ couldn't help but smile at that—about Rachel, and while he didn't for a moment believe that she would intentionally hurt Garfield, he wasn't entirely sure she knew who her green opponent really was, and accidents _do_ happen.

When he saw the hawk plunge into a dive, however, he immediately came to a halt and readied his latest self-modification: the sonic cannon in his right forearm. He didn't know how strong that black shield Rachel was keeping between her and Gar was, but he knew that if it didn't break when his buddy hit it, _he_ would. He trained his cannon on the floating woman…

Huh. Okay, the grass stain vanished. That's weird.

* * *

When the hawk diving at her vanished, Rachel's first instinct was to spin around in place to catch anyone coming up behind her, and in doing so allowed the green flea to land neatly on her jacket collar undetected. A moment later, that flea became a five hundred-pound gorilla, and with a startled squeak not dissimilar to the one the guard made when she grabbed him, she toppled to the ground.

They were already falling when Garfield realized his mistake. Without the shield obscuring her features, it was easy to identify her as the woman he had set out to rescue, even from behind and through the eyes of a gorilla, but by then it was too late. He might have wondered at how someone who could toss around a tyrannosaur would be grounded by the weight of a mere gorilla, but he didn't have the time to do so as the ground rushed up at him and he positioned himself under Rachel to take the brunt of the fall.

_Ow_.

Garfield bounced slightly as he landed, releasing Rachel as his arms instinctively flew to his sides to absorb some of the shock. His passenger, slightly worse for the thirty-foot fall, rolled off of his chest and stood up unsteadily, glaring at his injured form. Her hands were encased in the obsidian energy she had been using to devastating effect, and she assumed a defensive stance in case the green creature stirred again.

"Rachel, _stop!_" A familiar voice to her right surprised her, and she spun her head to face the man she remembered as Victor Stone, although she couldn't claim to know him as well as she might have liked to, considering that he was Garfield's friend. The other two she sensed, however, were completely unfamiliar, and she suspected the one to her left wasn't even human. She remained wary of them all, not trusting anyone who showed up so quickly to where a kidnapper stashed his victims.

"Rachel, that's Garfield right there, right in front of you." She blinked in surprise and glanced over at the green form on the ground beside her, and as she watched it melted into an unconscious Garfield, his clothing somewhat worse for wear. She let a small gasp escape and took a quick step towards him, before jumping back and looking suspiciously at Victor once more.

"It's a shapeshifter. It could just _look_ like Garfield… if he were green, that is." Even to her own ears, it sounded lame.

"Miss Roth," said the other unfamiliar human. "My name is Richard Grayson, and we—that is, Doctor Stone and myself—work for Doctor Anders-"

"_Kori!_" growled the alien behind Rachel.

"Not now, Kori. As I was saying, we work for _her_," he nodded to indicate the woman, "developing various methods for Metahumans who cannot blend in with normal society on their own—like Victor and Garfield—to do just that: blend in." Victor flickered for a moment, and suddenly the rather large, friendly African-American man she had lived next to for so long was replaced by an amalgamation of man and machine that, she was ashamed to admit, somewhat scared her.

"One of our earliest jobs was the grass stain," said Victor, assuming his holographic disguise once again. "He couldn't get a job to save his life, because none of the parents would want a Meta teaching their kids." He looked profoundly disgusted at the attitudes of the parents, and she felt in complete agreement… assuming he was telling the truth. "I whipped up the meds myself, and just told him that my employer's health insurance was covering it. I don't know why, probably because letting him try and guess who I worked for was too much damn fun."

"Cheater," moaned the wounded body at her feet, drawing Rachel's attention towards it. "You cheat at video games, you cheat at making me guess where you work, you probably cheat on your taxes too." There was a slight pause as he coughed roughly. "Not that there's anything _wrong_ with that, mind you, as long as it's the feds. The State of California pays my half of the rent, so you'd _better_ not be stiffing them."

A mere touch of her empathetic senses told her that, however impossible it might seem, the green man before her _was_, in fact, Garfield, and she rushed over to his side to heal his injuries. She felt the man who had identified himself as Richard tense as her hands lit up, but as he made no hostile action—she recalled quite clearly that he _hadn't_ identified himself as a Meta—she ignored him and focused on repairing Garfield.

Once she finished, Rachel helped him to his feet and allowed him to support his weight on her shoulders. She didn't actually think he _needed_ to, but when he tried to stand up on his own she jerked him gently back into leaning on her, and he didn't try again to correct her.

The alien woman who had insisted that Richard call her "Kori" had remained all but silent throughout the entire exchange—something which Rachel suspected was highly unusual for her—cleared her throat meaningfully, looking decidedly awkward. "I," she paused. "I do not know if this is considered rude on this planet, and if it is then I am _most_ apologetic, but… friend Richard mentioned a certain matter that-" she bit her lower lip, as though trying to find the most diplomatic way to say what she was trying to say. Rachel figured she could make a guess.

"You're talking about my father, I suppose?" The alien woman's relieved nod answered. "And your information is probably coming from Dr. Fate as well?" Kori looked to Richard, whose stony face all but confirmed her suspicions. "I made the mistake of going to Dr. Fate when I was fourteen concerning a prophecy that I am certain everyone here is already aware of."

"I'm not," protested Garfield, when everyone else nodded.

"Long story short, I was supposed to bring about the end of the world and life as we know it on my sixteenth birthday. Growing up with this at the back of my mind is probably what resulted in my sunny disposition. Can I continue?" Not waiting for a reply, she did just that.

"Dr. Fate, while all but unsurpassed in this dimension for his studies of the arcane, is rather… ignorant in the study of demonology, and so rather unprofessionally jumped to the conclusion that by virtue of what I was fated to do, my father—who was to be the instrument of all this death and destruction—was, naturally, Satan." Only Garfield felt surprised to her, although Victor seemed disbelieving and Kori seemed to not quite grasp the significance of the name. "Let me state in no uncertain terms that that is _not_ true." Victor and Garfield were letting off waves of relief, Richard reeked of suspicion, and Kori… well, she still didn't seem to quite grasp why this mattered. Rachel let her last statement sink in for a moment before allowing a small, yet thoroughly evil smile alight upon her face. "My father's name is Trigon, and Satan works for _him_."

Shock came from each of the other four people present, but she wasn't quite done yet. Turning her head to face Garfield, she gently patted him on the cheek and smiled disarmingly. "And yes, I _am_ going to make you ask him for my hand before we get married. Believe me, you wouldn't want to spring _that_ on him without asking." Garfield looked simultaneously delighted and terrified, and Rachel had no choice but to laugh.

* * *

"Say, where did all the henchmen go?"

* * *

_04:49_

_04:50_

_04:51_

_BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEE-click_

"Please tell me you just blew up the damn thing, Rachel. I _really_ don't want to get out of bed this morning. What kind of monsters do you work for that make you wake up this early, anyway?"

"The same ones you work for, who apparently don't take kidnapping as a legitimate excuse for missing a day at the office. Now be quiet, I want to enjoy my remaining eight minutes of sleep."

"Rachel, can I tell you a secret?"

"Can it wait eight minutes for when we're _both_ out of bed?"

"I don't actually have to be at the school until ten. I've been waking up three hours early ever since I met you so I could walk to work with you."

"That's… ten, you said?"

"Well, I could probably fudge it fifteen minutes or so, but I'd be an absolute wreck for third period."

"Huh. Well, I don't suppose it'll kill the office if I'm only half an hour early instead of three and a half."

"Wait… you mean? Hold on a sec, I'm tired and bad at math. One, carry the two, seventeen…"

"Shut up and go to sleep Garfield, unless you want me to _make_ you."

"That depends entirely on how you propose to make me, m'dear."

"How does blunt force trauma sound to you?"

"Painful, and not much fun."

"Oh, I don't know, I think I could enjoy myself."

"Huh? What do you…_oh_."

"'_Oh_,' indeed."

* * *

Trigon had to admit, he was pretty impressed with the kid. Not only did he track down his daughter with fifteen minutes to spare, but he managed to scare half of the criminal element of Jump City straight in one go… although, not without Raven's considerable help. It would have been a shame to have had to kill him if he had been too slow, but a deadline was a deadline, and Trigon was occasionally a stickler for rules. No matter, though. Raven finally getting that mortal boy under her thrall—perhaps it wasn't a magical enthrallment, but it was close enough for Trigon to count it as such, and he reluctantly had to admit that his daughter was correct in her assessment of his understanding of women—was all well and good, but the true purpose of the entire exercise had gone off without a hitch.

Trigon the Terrible, ruler of the Ten Hells, rolled over in his bed, grinned at his clock (8:00), and went straight back to sleep.

**THE END** (finally)

* * *

**Author's Note**: Yes, the whole kidnapping thing was orchestrated by Trigon so his daughter would wake up when she needed to and let him sleep in. Who am I to question the motivations of enormous demon lords?


End file.
